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epitome of incomprehensibility
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This runner has a fascinating story. I heard about her on a CBC radio story yesterday, didn't catch her name, and so looked up "marathon runner epilepsy CBC story" - thanks Google. Sometimes I have to tweak the keywords to unlock information, but the fourth or fifth door opened onto her Wikipedia page.
She was a tennis player in her 20s, but not a long-distance runner. When she was 28 she started having seizures and was diagnosed with epilepsy. Since she got a tingling feeling before a seizure, she knew when it was coming, and eventually she found that going for a run would stop the seizure from coming on. I don't know how she figured that out, whether she was frustrated and wanted to do something reckless and found it out all of a sudden, or whether she discovered it bit by bit.
(I guess that's the question I'd ask a writer if this were fiction, but real people have the right to share or not share what they want about themselves.)
This worked for a while, but she found she was getting seizures more often. She ran more often, and for longer distances. But then the gap between the warning signs and the seizure started narrowing and she didn't have time to put on her shoes and start running. Or the warning sign, the tingling feeling, wouldn't be there: the seizure would just start suddenly.
She went into the hospital for tests. It turned out one specific part of the brain was causing her seizures (so not traditional epilepsy, but something related?) and it was operable. She went through the risky operation and recovered well. There was a tense waiting period to see if it was successful; the answer was only yes when she hadn't had seizures for a few months.
Now, the tissue removed was in her temporal lobe, and it was her family who first noticed changes in her behaviour: not in her personality or general intelligence, but in her sense of time. Taking away that part of her brain damaged her ability to tell time. She became disorganized, forgetful, and late for appointments.
This was especially stressful because she had three young children at the time. But she also decided to go back to running, and that was therapeutic - not in a specific way like before, but something confidence-building (from her voice and what she said on the show, she didn't seem to be the type to give up easily, anyway!) She trained for and ran ultra-length marathons: races that lasted for hours or even days.
One highlight was winning the Yukon Arctic Ultra 300, a race that calls itself the toughest in the world: through the snow in the winter for 300 miles. I don't remember all the details, whether there are shelters already set up to sleep in or whether the runners have to carry tents with them (they have a pack for food, water, and necessities), but it seemed pretty damn tough.
Her lack of time-sense actually helps her run those extreme distances, she says: even though she gets physically tired - she said laughingly on the show that she's felt all sorts of horrible pain - she doesn't get mentally tired. At least, not easily. She can block out the distractions and focus on getting into a rhythm, the rhythm of her feet hitting the ground.
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